Lois Dodd at Alexandre Gallery
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Your reporter always welcomes a Lois Dodd exhibition, the latest which appears at Alexandre Gallery.
Two summers ago I wrote this about her exhibition in Rockland, Maine: “Over the decades, her subject has varied from still lifes to burning houses to whimsical scenarios involving nudes, but her method operates within narrow confines. She’ll impose strong designs, but abstraction for its own sake is out. She’ll paint the figure, but she’s not interested in the traditional realism that figure painting entails. She’ll paint flowers, but she avoids botanical exactitude. She’ll invent scenes, but there will be no illustration.
“Furthermore, the subject has to be interesting for no good reason. If there’s a reason, she questions whether it’s a good subject. The paint has to do nothing except exist as paint.”
“Lois Dodd: Selected Panel Paintings” runs through February 16 at Alexandre Gallery, 41 East 57th Street, 13th Floor, 212-755-2828, alexandregallery.com.
Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer. He blogs at Artblog.net.
